Étiquette : Scopus

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Comparison of OpenAlex and Scopus coverage of German institutions’ publications in top-tier journals

Authors : Andrey Lovakov, Ivan Sterligov

OpenAlex has recently emerged as a leading alternative to proprietary bibliometric sources. However, concerns remain regarding the quality of its metadata, especially the institutional profiles which are crucial for evaluating organizations. This study assesses the quality of affiliation data in OpenAlex using German research institutions.

Publications from top-tier journals were analyzed and institutional publication counts in OpenAlex were systematically compared with counts in Scopus. The results show that OpenAlex generally contains more publications at the journal level, reflecting its broader coverage. However, institutional publication counts in OpenAlex are consistently lower, indicating missing or incorrectly assigned affiliations.

Nevertheless, the correlations between institutional outputs in both databases are very high, suggesting that relative institutional rankings remain stable. These findings suggest that OpenAlex is suitable for comparative institutional analyses in academic research but requires further improvement in affiliation metadata before it can be used for evaluation contexts that rely on absolute publication counts.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.01337

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The ‘Big Three’ of Scientific Information: A comparative bibliometric review of Web of Science, Scopus, and OpenAlex

Authors : Daniel Torres-Salinas, Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado

The present comparative study examines the three main multidisciplinary bibliographic databases, Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, and OpenAlex, with the aim of providing up-to-date evidence on coverage, metadata quality, and functional features to help inform strategic decisions in research assessment.

The report is structured into two complementary methodological sections. First, it presents a systematic review of recent scholarly literature that investigates record volume, open-access coverage, linguistic diversity, reference coverage, and metadata quality; this is followed by an original bibliometric analysis of the 2015-2024 period that explores longitudinal distribution, document types, thematic profiles, linguistic differences, and overlap between databases. The text concludes with a ten-point executive summary and five recommendations.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.21908

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Geographical and disciplinary coverage of open access journals: OpenAlex, Scopus, and WoS

Authors : Abdelghani Maddi, Marion Maisonobe, Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri

This study aims to compare the geographical and disciplinary coverage of OA journals in three databases: OpenAlex, Scopus and the Web of Science (WoS). We used the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD), provided by the ISSN International Centre, as a reference to identify OA active journals (as of May 2024). Among the 62,701 active OA journals listed in ROAD, the WoS indexes 6,157 journals, Scopus indexes 7,351, while OpenAlex indexes 34,217.

A striking observation is the presence of 24,976 OA journals exclusively in OpenAlex, whereas only 182 journals are exclusively present in the WoS and 373 in Scopus. The geographical analysis focuses on two levels: continents and countries. As for disciplinary comparison, we use the ten disciplinary levels of the ROAD database. Moreover, our findings reveal a similarity in OA journal coverage between the WoS and Scopus. However, while OpenAlex offers better inclusivity and indexing, it is not without biases.

The WoS and Scopus predictably favor journals from Europe, North America and Oceania. Although OpenAlex presents a much more balanced indexing, certain regions and countries remain relatively underrepresented. Typically, Africa is proportionally as under-represented in OpenAlex as it is in Scopus, and some emerging countries are proportionally less represented in OpenAlex than in the WoS and Scopus.

These results underscore a marked similarity in OA journal indexing between WoS and Scopus, while OpenAlex aligns more closely with the distribution observed in the ROAD database, although it also exhibits some representational biases.

URL : Geographical and disciplinary coverage of open access journals: OpenAlex, Scopus, and WoS

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320347

 

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Open Science Alternatives to Scopus and the Web of Science: A Case Study in Regional Resilience

Authors : Irina D. Turgel, Olga A. Chernova

The recent years have seen increasing support for open science in academic circles. However, the large number of scientometric databases calls into question the comparability of the search and analysis tools they provide.

Using the subject area of regional resilience as an example, in this study, the aim was to analyze the capabilities of widely used databases to serve as alternatives to Scopus and Web of Science in solving research problems.

As alternatives, in the present article, the following open, free scientometric databases were considered: AMiner, Wizdom.ai, the Lens, Dimensions, and OpenAlex. Their capabilities were demonstrated for the subject area under study, and the obtained results were compared.

The study results showed that alternative databases provide essential data on trends in scientific development. It is noteworthy that they largely replicate the provided data, supplementing and expanding them by using different types of data sources. However, open databases do not guarantee a high quality of materials and exhibit a relatively low level of metadata.

Thus, it is premature to abandon the use of Scopus and Web of Science in research activities. Since scientometric databases were developed in different contexts, they are characterized by structural and functional heterogeneity, which complicates their comparison.

Therefore, a selective approach should be adopted for the choice of scientometric databases, taking into account financial and other constraints, as well as the specifics of research problems.

URL : Open Science Alternatives to Scopus and the Web of Science: A Case Study in Regional Resilience

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications12040043

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Academic writing in the age of AI: Comparing the reliability of ChatGPT and Bard with Scopus and Web of Science

Authors : Swati Garg, Asad Ahmad, Dag Øivind Madsen

ChatGPT and Bard (now known as Gemini) are becoming indispensable resources for researchers, academicians and diverse stakeholders within the academic landscape. At the same time, traditional digital tools such as scholarly databases continue to be widely used. Web of Science and Scopus are the most extensive academic databases and are generally regarded as consistently reliable scholarly research resources. With the increasing acceptance of artificial intelligence (AI) in academic writing, this study focuses on understanding the reliability of the new AI models compared to Scopus and Web of Science.

The study includes a bibliometric analysis of green, sustainable and ecological buying behaviour, covering the period from 1 January 2011 to 21 May 2023. These results are used to compare the results from the AI and the traditional scholarly databases on several parameters. Overall, the findings suggest that AI models like ChatGPT and Bard are not yet reliable for academic writing tasks. It appears to be too early to depend on AI for such tasks.

URL : Academic writing in the age of AI: Comparing the reliability of ChatGPT and Bard with Scopus and Web of Science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jik.2024.100563

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From indexation policies through citation networks to normalized citation impacts: Web of Science, Scopus, and Dimensions as varying resonance chambers

Authors : Stephan Stahlschmidt, Dimity Stephen

Dimensions was introduced as an alternative bibliometric database to the well-established Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, however all three databases have fundamental differences in coverage and content, resultant from their owners’ indexation philosophies.

In light of these differences, we explore here, using a citation network analysis and assessment of normalised citation impact of « duplicate » publications, whether the three databases offer structurally different perspectives of the bibliometric landscape or if they are essentially homogenous substitutes.

Our citation network analysis of core and exclusive 2016-2018 publications revealed a large set of core publications indexed in all three databases that are highly self-referential. In comparison, each database selected a set of exclusive publications that appeared to hold similarly low levels of relevance to the core set and to one another, with slightly more internal communication between exclusive publications in Scopus and Dimensions than WoS.

Our comparison of normalised citations for 41,848 publications indexed in all three databases found that German sectors were valuated as more impactful in Scopus and Dimensions compared to WoS, particularly for sectors with an applied research focus.

We conclude that the databases do present structurally different perspectives, although Scopus and Dimensions with their additional circle of applied research vary more from the more base research-focused WoS than they do from one another.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.01695

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Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World

Author : Raminta Pranckutė

Nowadays, the importance of bibliographic databases (DBs) has increased enormously, as they are the main providers of publication metadata and bibliometric indicators universally used both for research assessment practices and for performing daily tasks. Because the reliability of these tasks firstly depends on the data source, all users of the DBs should be able to choose the most suitable one.

Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus are the two main bibliographic DBs. The comprehensive evaluation of the DBs’ coverage is practically impossible without extensive bibliometric analyses or literature reviews, but most DBs users do not have bibliometric competence and/or are not willing to invest additional time for such evaluations.

Apart from that, the convenience of the DB’s interface, performance, provided impact indicators and additional tools may also influence the users’ choice. The main goal of this work is to provide all of the potential users with an all-inclusive description of the two main bibliographic DBs by gathering the findings that are presented in the most recent literature and information provided by the owners of the DBs at one place.

This overview should aid all stakeholders employing publication and citation data in selecting the most suitable DB.

URL : Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9010012